Kohl’s Is Adding a Grocery Department. Here’s What We Know So Far.
Back in January, we heard that Kohl’s was looking to partner with a food retailer to help drive traffic to its stores. Department store execs have been tight-lipped on what exactly that means for shops and shoppers, but we’ve been poking around and here’s what we’ve managed to dig up so far.
1. Kohl’s has lots of space to give to this project.
There are more than 1,100 stores, with most of them clocking in between 80,000 and 90,000 square feet, in 49 states. And according to our friends at Cooking Light, “Kohl’s has been reducing the retail space in stores by an average of 10 percent to make room for grocers to move in.” That’s a lot of square footage that could be used for produce and cheese!
2. Kohl’s is going to partner with Aldi.
We had heard that the store was going to team up with an existing national supermarket brand. Although we had been hoping for a team-up with Amazon (Kohl’s has already partnered with Amazon — who owns Whole Foods — to accept Amazon returns), we just learned from FoodDIVE that it was made official this morning. Aldi will be placing up to 10 pilot locations inside Kohl’s stores later this year. We’re not too terribly upset, however, as we love Aldi, too!
More on Aldi
3. The grocery store will have a separate entrance.
The setup won’t look like your Super Walmart or Target shopping experience (where you can grab an avocado and then go look at picture frames). “Rather, the entrances to Kohl’s and to the tenant retailer would be separate, with interior walls separating the operations,” reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The paper goes on to say that two stores in Massachusetts already have a similar situation, with one tenant being a Pier 1 and other being a local supermarket. All that’s to say that this could very well feel more like a mini strip mall and less like a store integration. Unless, say, those Aldi stores take Kohl’s Cash?!
What are you hoping for?